Recently, the Lafayette Parish School System (LPSS) adopted a new curriculum called, “Guidebooks.” With Guidebooks, students read an anchor text each unit and then several smaller texts about the same theme. For 6th-11th grade, there were 23 authors who were represented on the anchor text list. 

Of those 23 authors, 4 of them were Black, 1 was latinx, 0 were asian, 0 were indigenous to the Americas, but 18 were white.

Of those 23 authors, 8 were female, 15 were male, and none would fall into any other gender categories. Only one is an out member of the LGBTQ+ community.

There was no information on any disabilities that any of the authors may have.

To put this into perspective, if we were to condense the latinx, asian, indigenous, and queer authors into one category. We would have 2 authors. Mark Aronson, a white man, also has 2 books on this list. Meaning he, by himself, has an equal amount of representation as 4 demographics.

As teachers continue to keep their students engaged in the art of writing, the question becomes: How do we get our students of color, our female students, our queer students, our disabled students, or our neurodivergent students interested in writing if the curriculum suggests that what they have to write is not worth reading?

Therefore, those signing this petition demand that LPSS and the creators of Guidebooks redesign this curriculum to better represent the diversity of our students in the Lafayette Parish School System and the state of Louisiana. Change starts with education. Change starts with us.